• 48 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 12th, 2023

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  • Meme is truth.

    The rules are complicated, as they stipulate tipsters in with a chance of the FBI portion of the reward cannot nominate themselves.

    This means the McDonald’s worker will have to be put forward by an investigating agency, such as the Department of Defense or the FBI, which is then reviewed by an interagency committee.

    If approved, the suggestion is passed on to the Secretary of State, who signs off on the final decision.

    If that’s not tough enough, the full reward amount could also be in dispute as payment amounts are based on factors from the value of the information provided, the level of threat, the severity of danger or injury to people or property, and the degree of the source’s cooperation.

    As for the NYPD’s $10k, the rewards program is granted through Crime Stoppers, where tipsters receive a unique reference number.

    This number is crucial as the tipster has to use it call back or check the status of the investigation online before lodging a claim with the NYC Police Foundation and the Crime Stoppers Board of Directors, who ultimately decide whether to approve the tip and instruct the caller how to receive it.

    So, if the informant called 911 instead of Crime Stoppers, they might be unable to make the claim.

    In both cases, the rewards will only be paid out if the arrest leads to indictment or conviction from the court - so the McDonald’s employee could be waiting a while and even at the end of it all, might not even get a dime.

    Doing god’s work over here






  • The roots of the relationship goes back several decades.

    By the late 1970s, the state apparatus of the Baath regime under Assad had consolidated into an anti-Sunni orientation. Official propaganda incited Alawite farmers against rich Sunni landowners and regularly disseminated stereotypes of Sunni merchants and industrialists, casting them as enemies of nationalisation and socialist revolution. Bitterness towards the Assadist regime and the Alawite elite in the Baath and armed forces became widespread amongst the Sunni majority, laying the beginnings of an Islamic resistance. Prominent leaders of Muslim Brotherhood like Issam al-Attar were imprisoned and exiled. A coalition of the traditional Syrian Sunni ulema, Muslim Brotherhood revolutionaries and Islamist activists formed the Syrian Islamic Front in 1980 with objective of overthrowing Assad through Jihad and establishing an Islamic state. In the same year, Hafez officially supported Iran in its war with Iraq and controversially began importing Iranian fighters and terror groups into Lebanon and Syria. This led to rising social tensions within the country which eventually became a full-fledged rebellion in 1982; led by the Islamic Front. The regime responded by slaughtering the Sunni inhabitants in Hama and Aleppo and bombarding numerous mosques, killing around 20,000–40,000 civilians. The uprising was brutally crushed and Assad regarded the Muslim Brethren as demolished.

    You’d expect party unity between Syrian Ba’ath and Iraqi Ba’ath, but Saadam was labeled a fascist and the Syrian regional branch recognized Khomeni rather early on. Survival and having regional friends were more important than playing games.


  • I figured I’d dig a bit and find the source. It’s from a 2006 NYT article. Here’s the quote in context:

    It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

    Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

    “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

    This quote is nominally about the ruling class manipulating the state for their own benefits. However, I don’t think he would do away with class as a Marxist revolution would. Rather, he thinks class warfare would end when the rich are taxed a proportion equal to the working class. The state would still exist in service of the bourgeois, ownership of the means of production would still be theirs, and society would still be shaped by them.








  • The loss of Roman concrete happened before the collapse of the Western Roman empire. This is one exception to your insightful comment. Major public works were halted in the last century before the collapse. The last major project in Western Europe was the Temple of Minerva around 325 CE.

    In Constantinople, a small church, tha Hagia Irene, has concrete walls. Larger works, like the famous city walls, don’t have any concrete. It honestly may not have been an appropriate material choice, but other projects didn’t use Roman concrete either. I think this might be because volcanic ash wasn’t readily available.


  • I saw it. I read it. I commented on it.

    The study they use to support that quote does not actually support that quote. You should read the discussion section of the cited study. Did you ever wonder why they only cited one seven year old journal article? And then misrepresent it’s findings?

    Do you realize that the Cicero Institute isn’t a journal? I wrote elsewhere who they are. They are not a reliable source.

    Do I need to use smaller words?

    What is wrong with you? Do you not realize we are having a discussion elsewhere in this thread?

    1. The Cicero Institute isn’t a journal. They are a right wing think tank.
    2. They cite a single study in that article.
    3. The use that citation to support a sentence that is no where near what is stated in study.
    4. You fail to look at any systematic studies regarding Housing First.

  • It boggles my mind how you manage to dance around every request for science backed evidence focusing only on your preconceived notions. When you weirdly in the most internet way say I won’t read the scientific article cited in the conservative think tank whose only purpose is to skewer housing first and misrepresent it’s working. I read it and note that that they misuse the findings of the journal. Silence.

    I ask for scientific studies to support your view. There is now several decades of systematic research to support it’s role in addressing the homelessness crisis. Why? Is it just because you don’t want to read a view that may complicate your prescription? Do you not feel comfortable reading scientific articles? What is going on?

    Your definition never mentions the role of case worker in developing goals and creating buy in for compliance. Patience, even highly motivated ones, regularly lapse in compliance. Life changing transformations are not easy.

    I provided a quote that we don’t have understanding why people get clean. It’s not because we force them, that’s for sure.

    Why do you now bring up 110? Does this have anything to do with Housing First? Or is it part of so opus that addicts are bad children who need to be forced to do what’s good for them?

    I don’t think we’re going to meet in a space of mutual understanding. I think your presumptions that there people get clean only if you force them. You just keep on shouting at me that this is true. Show me some evidence because everything I see from scientific studies to front line workers say, “On occasion or happens, but the harm it does to others is far worse.”